I/UCRC: Consortium for Embedded Systems - Phase II

NSF I/UCRC嵌入式系统中心(CES)成立于2009年，由亚利桑那州立大学(LEAD)和南伊利诺伊大学卡本代尔分校共同努力，为推动嵌入式系统(ES)硬件和软件领域的发展开展行业相关研究。它于2013年秋季开始运营第一阶段的第五个年头。这项提案是为了继续将CES作为第二阶段I/UCRC。在第一阶段，CES将其研究计划安排为六个主要研究主题，(1)功率、能源和热感知设计，(2)电子系统级(ESL)设计和技术，(3)嵌入式多核架构和编程，(4)嵌入式软件系统，(5)网络物理系统，以及(6)集成电路技术、设计和测试。它进行了与行业相关的基础研究，有来自17家公司的70个行业资助项目，平均涉及12.6名教职员工和每年26.4名研究生。行业赞助的学生实习已经占据了50个长期的全职职位。在第二阶段，CES将在正在进行的研究努力的基础上，涵盖这些领域的新主题，并可能基于现有的和新的行业合作伙伴以及额外的教师来重新平衡其重点。具体地说，预计新的项目将涉及新出现的纳米技术，如忆阻器和自旋电子器件；更加重视超低功率系统的能量收集技术；更多涉及安全和可信性的项目；确保可证明正确的行为的设计技术和工具；以及在存在不确定性的情况下进行决策的新计算范式。在CES上进行的研究解决了ES提出的许多具有挑战性的问题，其解决方案可以应用于其他设计微电子系统平台。这项工作的多学科性质，以及教师专业知识和行业合作伙伴的多样性，将导致CESS研究成果的社会影响。比如，CES？致力于提高ES硬件和软件的能效，改进和扩展医疗应用和消费电子产品的电池供电设备，还可以显著提高高性能服务器的能效，从而减少对环境的破坏。同样，CES？混合动力系统的验证工作正在进行，以确保汽车控制系统正确运行。同样的技术将用于各种安全关键系统。CES？用于监测桥梁的传感器的工作是其研究计划影响深远的社会效益的又一个例子。CES在亚利桑那州立大学为本科生和研究生提供了一个广受欢迎的实习项目。CES的研究生已经学会了在有限的时间内向行业成员和不同背景的观众解释和证明他们的工作的必要性和重要性。这使得他们和他们的工作对行业来说更有市场。最后，亚利桑那州立大学和SIUC都成功地引进了优秀的女性教师，CES将在第二阶段继续这一努力。在第二阶段，预计CES将至少增加一个新的地点(东北大学)，并将继续努力扩大CES？为实现既定目标而制定的强有力的营销计划，成为行业会员。此外，CES将探讨增加一个或两个国际地点的可能性：希腊的帕特拉斯大学(UOP)和印度班加罗尔的印度科学研究所(IISc)。UOP官员预计将出席2014年1月的CES会议，IISC已表示有兴趣通过他们最近成立的罗伯特·博世网络物理系统中心，探索成为I/UCRC站点的方法。

The NSF I/UCRC Center for Embedded Systems (CES), was established in 2009 as a collaborative effort of Arizona State University (lead) and Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, to perform the industry relevant research for advancing the field of Embedded Systems (ES) hardware and software. It commenced its fifth year of operation of Phase I in Fall 2013. This proposal is for continuation of the CES as a Phase II I/UCRC. During Phase I, CES organized its research program into six main research topics, (1) Power, Energy and Thermal-Aware Design, (2) Electronic System-level (ESL) Design and Technologies, (3) Embedded Multicore Architectures and Programming, (4) Embedded Software Systems, (5) Cyber-Physical Systems, and (6) Integrated Circuit Technologies, Design, and Test. It has conducted fundamental, industry-relevant research, with 70 industry funded projects from 17 companies, involving average of 12.6 faculty, and 26.4 graduate students per year. Industry sponsored student internships have led 50 permanent, full time positions. In Phase II, CES will build upon the ongoing research efforts and cover new topics within these areas, and possibly re-balance its emphasis based on the existing and new industry partners, and additional faculty. Specifically, new projects are expected involving emerging nanotechnologies such as memristors and spintronic devices; a greater emphasis on energy harvesting techniques for ultra-low power systems; more projects addressing security and trustworthiness; design techniques and tools for guaranteeing provably correct behavior; and new computation paradigms that perform decision making in the presence of uncertainty. The research conducted at CES addresses many of the challenging problems posed by ES, the solutions to which can be applied to other design microelectronic system platforms. The multi-disciplinary nature of the work, and the diversity of the faculty expertise and the industrial partners will result in societal impact of CESs research outcomes. For instance, CES? work on improving the energy efficiency of ES hardware and software, improves and expands battery powered devices for medical applications and consumer electronics, and can also significantly improve the energy efficiency of high performance servers, thereby reducing the damage to the environment. Similarly, CES? work in verification of hybrid systems is being used to ensure that controls systems in automobiles will operate correctly. The same technologies will be used in all sorts of safety critical systems. CES? work on sensors for monitoring bridges is yet another example of the far reaching societal benefits of its research program. CES maintains a popular internship program at ASU for both undergraduate and graduate students. CES graduate students have learned the necessity and importance of explaining and justifying their work to industry members in a public forum with limited time and to an audience with varied backgrounds. This has made them and their work enormously more marketable to industry. Finally, both ASU and SIUC have successfully inducted outstanding female faculty, and CES will continue this effort in Phase II. In Phase II it is expected that at least one new site (Northeastern University) will be added to CES and continued efforts will be made to expand CES? industrial membership following a strong marketing plan that has been developed to achieve set targets. In addition, CES will explore the possibility of adding one or possibly two international sites: the University of Patras (UoP) in Greece, and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India. UoP officials are expected to attend the January 2014 meeting of CES, and IISc has expressed interest in exploring ways to become a I/UCRC site, through their recently established Robert Bosch Center for Cyberphysical Systems.